How are manufacturer details determined for LDs? I have two Lupin III boxsets (TV Perfection BOX and Theater Box) that don't have information on many aspects on the DB and wanted to contribute a bit

Hi crashoveride,

All you need to do is do an update from the dedicated page for the release in the database. When you are looking at the page for the release you have, click on "update" in the "user controls" section in the lower left part of the screen. That will take you to the update screen. Just enter the mint markings from your discs in the space on that screen. In most cases, the "Mint-o-Matic" device that Julien has programmed into the database will then automatically tell you which facility manufactured the disc. Usually, the manufacturing plant will appear on the screen next to the mint markings after you enter them in the space provided. The format of the mint markings you enter will allow the Mint-o-Matic to determine where the disc was made. You see, each manufacturing plant used their own unique combination of characters in the mint markings that they etched into the discs. Often, it may be something as simple as one specific character in a specific position in the markings which determines where that disc was pressed. For example, Pioneer Japan normally has a "-P" suffix at the end of the batch number in the mint markings. This is the case with all of their discs, except for the early ones which have hand-scratched mint markings. The Mint-o-matic sometimes has a difficult time deciphering those. Similarly, Kuraray discs normally have a "-K" suffix at the end of the batch numbers. Likewise, the other manufacturing plants each had their own unique "signature" characteristics in their mint markings which enable the Mint-o-Matic to detect their products as well. The only time it doesn't work is when you enter mint markings which don't include any of the "signature" characteristics that Julien has programmed into the device. This usually means that either you didn't enter the markings correctly, or the disc came from an unknown manufacturing plant (i.e. not one of the recognized facilities on the established manufacturers list). Just make sure that you enter all of the correct characters (both numbers and letters) in the correct order from the discs that you own. As long as you carefully enter all of the characters, the Mint-o-Matic will tell you where the disc was made the vast majority of the time. I hope this is helpful to you, and thanks for your interest in contributing information to the database! It's only with the participation of collectors like yourself that the database will continue to grow with more accurate and complete information for the benefit of all in the global LD community!

Best Regards,
David

Just submitted marks for those two boxes, thank you!

Hi crashoveride,

Glad I was able to help! By the way, welcome to LDDb! It looks like you just joined recently. We're happy to have you among us here! You'll find this to be, for the most part, a very friendly place indeed, full of like-minded collectors such as yourself, who are passionate about this wonderful old format. You'll also find a lot of valuable and useful information about laserdisc releases archived here, of which you have just become an active participant by submitting two updates! Well done, my friend! Please don't hesitate to submit more information in the future about any other releases you may happen to have in your collection. Now that you are a registered member here, you can interact fully with the database, as you just did, by doing updates to any of the listing pages. Basically, anything that is missing (any field where you see the three question marks) you are now able to fill in, just as you did with the mint markings. Also, you can submit from scratch any title you might own which is not presently in the database. I don't know how large your collection is, but if you own any unusual, rare titles, they may not be catalogued here yet. If you own anything that you can't find listed here, I would encourage you to submit as much information as you can about it, so that it can be added to the database, and become part of the permanent historical record of this archival format. It's for the benefit of everyone here now, as well as for those who may start collecting in the future. You'll notice that your updates of the mint markings do not immediately appear on the listing pages. This is because they first go into the "pending" section of the website. They will be kept there awaiting validation by Julien, our webmaster/administrator of this site. You see, he wants to be certain to maintain the accuracy of the information archived here, so that it doesn't become like the Wild Wild West, with people adding inaccurate/bogus information at will. In order to keep the information on this site accurate, Julien reviews each of the updates and new title submissions to see if everything looks correct and legitimate. If everything looks okay, he validates the update/submission, and it becomes a permanent part of the site. Please be patient with Julien. All of this takes time, and along with all of his other duties of maintaining this site, sometimes it takes awhile to get all of the submissions through the validation process. Julien is very good at what he does, and quite passionate about doing it right. Just trust that it will get handled properly, with a little time. Thanks for making your first contributions to the database! You'll see them appear on the listing pages in the near future.

Best Regards,
David